Find Live comedy

Dapper Laughs: How it all went wrong

December 2012

Daniel O'Reilly, a former cruise ship entertainer who grew up in Woking and comes from Clapham Common, creates a laddish alter-ego called Dapper Laughs

December 24, 2012

Dapper Laughs joins Twitter. His first tweet: 'Hope Santa empties his sack in my room tonight #Christmas'. It's the start of what will become an enviable social media profile, with 250,000 followers on Twitter.

July 3, 2013

He posts his first six-second Vine – an 'old wheely bin' gag. In his second, a week later, he says the no-left-turn sign means 'no benders', before putting on a camp voice and deep-throating a banana. Like most of his videos, it's hashtagged '#comedy', Eventually he will build up 600,000 followers on Vine.

October 30,2013

Dapper Laughs sets up his official Facebook profile. It currently has 1.7million 'likes'

December 19, 2013

He sets up a YouTube Channel, currently with 46,000 subscribers

February 9, 2014

He releases his first single Proper Moist, which makes No 15 in the charts

July 30

ITV2 announces it has commissioned the six-part series Dapper Laughs On The Pull, hailing their 'brilliant new talent'. The show's executive producer Dan Baldwin – Holly Willoughby's husband – later says: 'I believe he is the new Cilla Black'

September 5

The official ITV2 Twitter account tweets: 'This charmer @dapperlaughs popped in to see us today. Don't worry we kept ALL women locked up safely.' The message has since been deleted since it came back to haunt the broadcaster.

September 29

Dapper Laughs On The Pull starts on ITV2. Chortle describes him as a 'vain, sleazy, pick-up guy … more likely to normalise crass, unpleasant behaviour than satirise it.'

October 8

Lee Kern writes an article accusing On The Pull of being a 'rapist's almanac' for the Chortle Correspondents page. It is subsequently republished on Huffington Post.

October 16

Dapper Laughs performs a sold-out gig at London's Scala, in which he 'jokes' to a woman in the front row that she is 'gagging for a rape''

October 31

He releases Proper Naughty Christmas, promising all proceeds will go to an unspecified homeless charity. He suggested a bad review from usvsthe3m.com was equivalent of taking money from the homeless. The album - which includes a line telling a tramp he 'stinks of shit' has since been withdrawn, and is not now available from the ITunes store in the UK.

November 4

Cardiff University Student Union cancels his forthcoming gig at their venue after student Vicky Chandler starts a petition. She said: 'I cannot believe a man whose jokes centre around the trivialisation of rape, unprotected sex and dehumanising women is allowed a soapbox for his misogyny.''

November 7

Homeless charity Shelter says it will refuse to accept any donation from Dapper Laughs, saying his comedy is 'deeply offensive to homeless people'. Donations rise because of it.

November 8

A petition is set up calling on ITV2 to cancel Dapper Laughs On The Pull. It eventually attracts more than 68,000 signatures.

November 8

Dapper Laughs issues an apology via Twitter if he caused upset by 'overstepping the mark' as he 'pushed boundaries'.

44 comedians put their name to an open letter condemning the act, saying that he is not pushing boundaries at all.

We see you are using AdBlocker software. Chortle relies on advertisers to fund this website so it’s free for you, so we would ask that you disable it for this site. Our ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Help keep Chortle viable.